The present invention relates generally to the process of discovery (and usually) display of devices on a network, that is a network of electronic devices comprising, for example, workstations, personal computers, servers, hubs, routers, bridges, switches, (hereinafter referred to as devices of the network), and links between these devices which may be in the form of physical cable or wireless links. The network may be a local area network (LAN), such as an Ethernet network, wide area network (WAN) or other types, including wireless networks, and may operate in accordance with any desired protocol.
Computers and other devices connected to a network may be managed or unmanaged devices. A managed device has processing capability which enables it to monitor data traffic sent from, received at, and passing through the ports of the device. Monitored data associated with the ports of the network device is stored in memory on the network device. For example, data relating to the origin of a data packet which is received at a port is stored along with the identify of the relevant port.
After such a network has been installed, it is desirable for the person appointed network manager to be able to understand the technical operation of the network. In known network management systems, relevant data is retrieved from the managed devices, compiled and displayed (“discovered”).
The topology of the network may be deduced by operation of the network manager's computer by the process of discovery in which each of the devices of the network are interrogated to thereby produce on a network manager's workstation details of the network and its operation, preferably in the form of a network map which may be displayed on a visual display unit showing the devices and links between the devices. At its simplest, and where the device is a “managed” device, this information is usually provided by interrogation using a known protocol, such as, but not limited to, the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), of the so-called ‘agent’ of each device which stores the device's unique MAC address, the type of device and the MAC addresses embedded in the data passing into a particular port which thereby gives the MAC addresses of the origin of the data and hence the MAC address of the devices which are connected to the ports directly or indirectly.
The present invention relates in particular to the discovery and preferably the automated detection of the servers or server like devices in the network.
In some circumstances the interrogation of the agent of each device does not necessarily provide sufficient information to identify it as a server-like device which may simply be a computer carrying particular software. In fact, the network manager normally manually inserts the information that a particular device (computer) on the network is a server or server like device.
Hitherto attempts have been made to automatically identify servers by identifying the operating system a device is running but this can lead to misidentifications. Manual entry of known servers requires end user knowledge of which are the servers within the network which becomes impossible when the network is large.